Good evening, subscribers. All parties love the idea of Access to Information … while they’re in opposition. Once in power, of course, they find it an awful nuisance — all those pesky NGOs and journalists penetrating the bureaucracy, asking irritating questions. Takes all the fun out of running things.

Governments resent Access to Information — but no government has done more that the Harper Conservatives to make the system opaque, baffling and dysfunctional, writes Christopher Waddell. “Gradually tighten the squeeze, and the system slowly collapses — or the people wanting to know what the government is up to eventually give up and go away. Either way, you get a convenient rationale for the killing the access process entirely.”

From the Pembina Institute, a roadmap for addressing climate change in the only province that really matters: Alberta. Chris Severson-Baker says Canada’s energy warehouse is in the unique position of being able to drastically cut its carbon emissions in a hurry — while actually reducing the cost of energy to the consumer. “If Alberta levelled the playing field for solar and wind producers, it could increase investment, lower prices for consumers and reduce Alberta’s carbon pollution.”

The reins of power in Zimbabwe appear to be passing from one blood-grimed hand to another. By tapping Emmerson Mnangagwa as his senior VP this week, Robert Mugabe has selected as his heir apparent a man who perpetrated almost as many massacres as his deranged boss. “With Mnangagwa acting as the central manager, the army’s North Korean-trained Fifth Brigade was sent to ravage Matabeleland. A long investigation by the Catholic Church Commission for Justice and Peace estimated that at least 20,000 people died in the three years the slaughter lasted.”

The release of the U.S. Senate report on the CIA’s torture campaign during the Bush years barely registered with Latin Americans, writes Bloomberg’s James Gibney. No surprise there: The “dirty wars” era gave Latin Americans a harrowing education in how American security services run interrogations when no one is looking. “During the latter stages of the Cold War, Central America was a veritable laboratory for U.S. torture techniques.”